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Keel turns off all four US bitcoin mines and waits until 2027 for the first data center dollar
The former Bitfarms has 478MW of US data center capacity in permitting and no AI revenue from any of it before 2027. The interconnect converts faster than the income statement.
The Product Desk · Product desk
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What happened
- Keel Infrastructure, formerly known as Bitfarms, has decommissioned all four of its US Bitcoin mining sites as it moves ahead with a pivot into AI and high-performance computing data centers.
- Keel ceased mining at its 18MW Moses Lake facility in Washington on April 28.
- Keel shut down operations at its Panther Creek, Scrubgrass and Sharon sites in Pennsylvania on June 29, according to its second-quarter results.
- Panther Creek and Scrubgrass continue to generate revenue through the sale of electricity.
- Keel is advancing three priority US data center developments offering a combined 478MW of gross capacity.
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Why it matters
Keel Infrastructure, the company formerly known as Bitfarms, has decommissioned all four of its US bitcoin mining sites, and the first of its replacement data centers is not expected to generate revenue until 2027 [1][6]. That interval, not the megawatt totals, is the substance of the crypto-to-AI conversion trade: the grid connection survives the switch, the cash flow does not.
The shutdowns were quick. Mining stopped at the 18MW Moses Lake site in Washington on April 28, and at Panther Creek, Scrubgrass and Sharon in Pennsylvania on June 29, according to the company's second-quarter results [2][3]. Panther Creek and Scrubgrass still earn money by selling their electricity rather than consuming it [4], which is the only bridge revenue in the portfolio. Moses Lake, the first site meant to come back as a data center, is at least 20 months from any income under Keel's own 2027 target [3]; its mining building has been demolished, zoning is approved, and land development and environmental permits are still in progress [6].
The three priority US developments total 478MW gross [5]. Sharon is a 110MW build with zoning and land development approvals and transformers already delivered [7]. Panther Creek is a 350MW hyperscale campus with zoning and conditional land development approval, on 336 acres that Keel has previously said could go beyond 500MW [8]. That arithmetic leaves roughly 18MW for Moses Lake, the same figure as the mine it replaces [1]. In other words, the site closest to producing revenue is also the smallest, and the two large ones are still in permitting. CEO Ben Gagnon said all three are nearing full permitting with multiple prospective tenants negotiating for capacity at each location [9]; no lease has been announced.
Set the 478MW against the 2.2GW development pipeline the company claims and the disclosed, permitted portion is about 22 percent [2]. A further 96MW is planned at Sherbrooke, Quebec, where Keel has local approval to consolidate the power allocated to three existing Canadian mining sites into one campus and convert the use to HPC and AI, subject to provincial approval [10]. It still runs the rest of its Canadian mining fleet, sold its last Paraguayan facility in April, and abandoned its Argentinian operation after losing its power supply [11].
The interim numbers show what the gap costs. Second-quarter revenue was $30.4m, down 50 percent from $60.9m a year earlier, which Keel attributed to weaker mining economics and the Moses Lake closure [12]. The operating loss was $140.8m against operating income of $10.8m a year earlier, a swing of $151.6m, and included $84.1m of depreciation and amortisation, leaving roughly $56.7m of operating loss before those write-downs [13][5][4]. The net loss widened to $65m [13].
Funding the wait is the point of the balance sheet. Keel raised $458m in convertible notes during the quarter and reported about $819m of liquidity as of August 7, split between $698m of unrestricted cash and $121m in bitcoin [14]. It sold 1,085 bitcoin for $75m between April 1 and August 7, an average of roughly $69,100 a coin, and holds 1,861 [15][6]. The rebrand from Bitfarms and the move of corporate domicile from Canada to the US both happened in April [16].
Watch for a signed tenant at Sharon or Panther Creek, the outstanding Moses Lake environmental permit, and provincial sign-off in Quebec. Until one of those closes, the pipeline is permits and transformers funded by a convertible note and bitcoin sales.